Tag Archives: Equitorial Guinea

I have been asking myself, does Africa need help? Every year aids, loans and subventions are received by African governments from the USA, World Bank and Europe but we receive news of corruption and massive money laundering schemes by African leaders. So I decided to engage the readers of my blog in this question. In 2004, Human
Rights Watch exposed the
government of Equitorial Guinea’s lavish spending
habits. Here is a country of just about 500000 people and is the 4th largest producer of Oil in Africa. The country has a high per capita income but its citizens live on so little because the country’s wealth is embezzled by its 35 year ruler and his son, the vice president. The US benefits from this country massively because the US is the largest importer of crude from Equitorial Guinea but the US has never deemed it fit to point out the crimes committed by the country’s leadership. Rather, the western governments allow these corrupt officials to use their banks for laundering huge amounts and then they give back a percentage as loans and aids. I think non-African citizens should speak against the use of their paid taxes to swell the coffers of African presidents. Why do you think African presidents want to remain in power for extended periods of time? The monetary gain.
Nigeria, for instance has the highest paid MPs in the world yet about 70 percent of its population has no access to electricity for almost 10 hours of every day. A typical Nigerian senator is paid almost twice as much as the US president yet unemployment rate among youths is as high as 60 percent. The Central Bank of Nigeria alleges that about 25 percent of the countries income caters for the MPs alone and that includes all the loans and aids constantly given to this country. The health sector is so backward that Nigeria accounts for over 90 percent of polio cases in the world. Money embezzled in Nigeria between2012 to 2013 alone amounts to almost 2trillion dollars. The country is the largest oil producer in Africa. Yet, the tax payers of Europe and America watch as their governments send their money off to Africa where it will be looted to private pockets.